Vehicle motion is one of the key human factors problems associated with the implementation of advanced technologies in mobile command and control units [1, 2]. This paper compares results from a simulator [3] and an on-road [4] study to investigate whether motion simulation is a behaviourally valid tool for studying the impact of vehicle motion of the use of touch screen BMS. The studies examined the impact of “normal” and “high” levels of vehicle motion across a range of touch screen Battle Management System (BMS) task types (e.g. reading, writing, panning and zooming, and drawing). The current study compared completion task times and accuracy in the simulator and on-road study for each task type. Overall, the results suggest that simulated motion is appropriate for studying the direction of effects on BMS touch screen tasks, but not the magnitude of those effects. The findings suggest that the behavioural validity of simulators may be highly task specific, as the magnitude of observed effects varied across BMS task types. Challenges for using simulators to investigate the human factors problems associated with C2 on the move are discussed.